


My mouth like a sharpened sword

by ofelia_found



Category: Far Cry 5
Genre: Drug Addiction, Drug Use, F/M, Past Sexual Abuse, Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-17
Updated: 2021-03-17
Packaged: 2021-03-26 14:28:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30107400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ofelia_found/pseuds/ofelia_found
Summary: follow up to - your sins like the morning mist- her and joseph, locked in a bunker underneath the burning world. He wants to eat her sins like wafers, get his fingers tucked inside her skull, thumbs pressed down on her tongue. He wants to cut her up.- but she is burning too.
Relationships: Female Deputy | Judge/John Seed, Female Deputy | Judge/Joseph Seed, Joseph Seed/Original Female Character(s), also rape/noncon elements are mentioned but not featured from joseph, but in the past because he's dead now, great track record there, she killed him - Relationship, yup - Relationship
Comments: 3
Kudos: 9





	My mouth like a sharpened sword

Two months after daddy died, they take out Ada’s hair.

They should have done it sooner, but the braids have taken on a kind of significance for them, little twists tying them back to Before.

But Ada’s hair starts breaking, and it’s time to take it out.

Rook tries to be as gentle as she can. She’s usually such a clumsy, abrupt thing, but she makes her hands be slow and steady, trying to remember how Grandma used to do it.

Those braids had been different, though – done by Grandma herself, and bigger than these salon-woven strands.

The hairs break in Rook’s concentrating fingertips. But even when Ada’s scalp-skin is pulled and pricked by her sister’s combing, she doesn’t say a word, sitting silent and calm with smarting eyes.

Rook feels sick as she does it. Like there is a sour apple in her belly. She doesn’t want to say goodbye to the braids.

_But,_ she thinks to herself, _Ada will be sad too. So be brave._ Ada’d wanted these braids for months and months, been so happy to sit in the salon while the hairdressers cooed and fussed over her. She’d flicked through magazines of models with sisterlocks, tight coils, afros and curls, her fingers lingering over the glossy photographs, savouring these smiling, glamorous women like boiled sweets.

(Rook, true to form, had been bored in minutes, and wandered outside to make friends with a dog tied up outside)

And now the braids were coming out, and their daddy was dead, and their grandmas were dead, and momma smelt like rotten lilies.

She leaves Ada washing her newly released hair with the last of the conditioner, and goes to knock on the door to momma’s bedroom.

Her stomach clenches with acid. It feels like her insides being twisted between two hands, and a few cold droplets of sweat break out. She feels like a traitor, to feel this sharp, sickening feeling at the thought of seeing her momma.

She opens the door, softly. Momma is up, sitting with her back to the door, the curtains drawn and the whole room dark and stuffy.

“Momma?” Her voice wobbles, and she feels a wave of embarrassment and shame at that.

Momma doesn’t answer, but Rook can tell she’d heard her.

“Momma, can we have some oil?”

“Whatcha want that for?” Momma’s voice is thick, and slurry. It sounds like a fever.

“For Ada’s hair?”

Momma doesn’t respond. She’s never really paid attention to what to do with their hair – brushed it then beaten it back into two braids. It had been grandma who showed them how care for it, sleep on silk and avoid too much shampoo. Ada followed it religiously. Rook less so – why, grandma had always remarked, her hair was frizzy and fuzzy and straight and curly and kinky all at once, and always breaking.

Rook feels harsh and scrubbed up inside. Her fingernails are smarting and her hands aching from unweaving, her eyes hurt and she is so, so tired. She wants to fall over to Momma, crawl up beside her on the bed, her head in mommas lap, lets momma stroke away the baby hairs from her forehead and the bad dreams. To be loved, soft and floppy as a puppy.

But she needs to be strong. For Ada. And momma has to help.

“We need coconut oil, ‘cos her hairs been in braids and it’s dry, and we can’t find any in the cupboard and we’re wondering if you have some, or if we could go to the shops-”

Momma turns, and her eyes look like nothing Rook has ever seen before. They are red, almost bloody round the edges. They burn like bleach.

“Hair don’t matter.” Her voice is very hard.

Rook should walk away. This isn’t her momma. This is like another person. There’s snot run down from her nose, and she doesn’t wipe it away. There’s something pulsing from her, a dark cloud, and her face is waxy, a dead thing.

If Rook was a dog, she would whine.

She should walk away.

She never walks away. Too stubborn. Too stupid.

“It matters to Ada.” She grips her hands into fists, and feels a burst of anger hit her. Her mouth is tingling, her tongue feels wrong, and she might be about to cry.

Momma doesn’t respond, only blinks her awful, dead-fish eyes.

“I said, it matters to Ada!”

“Well. Not to me.” Then momma sinks down onto the bed, pulls the covers over herself. Rook stands, mute and breathless with rage, in the doorway. She considers running over to momma, hitting her. Taking her by the shoulders and screaming into her face – where’ve you gone? Why have you left us! I love you! I need you! Put her face on momma’s lap and cry. Wait for her head to be stroked.

Maybe she would have. If Momma hadn’t lifted the blanket away, her face shifted, grief struck, her mouth a bruised peach, a wail, and stretched her hands towards Rook.

‘Baby. Baby I’m sorry. I didn’t mean-’

Then rook had turned away, full of shards and glass, slammed the door and turned the cupboard upside down till she found olive oil for Ada’s hair.

Things changed with momma after that. She was back to crumpled flower, weeping eyes, soft snuffles as she hugged them and sad songs on the guitar. Rook didn’t trust it anymore. There was something underneath with dead eyes, and teeth, crackling like a live-wire.

And that is the thing that comes out now.

Because Rook doesn’t turn away. She stays, rooted to the spot, nails through her feet, watches as momma lifts herself, disjointed from the bed. But this isn’t the right one – not the right time for this momma. She’s thin, suddenly, cheeks deflating and concaving before Rook’s eyes, her eyes bulging and blank in her skull. Her eyes like pinpricks. She moves with jerky, insubstantial movement as she stumbles towards her, and Rook strains to move but there are nails, real nails, through her feet, and every move is agony.

Momma opens her mouth, and her teeth are bloody.

Baby.

She croaks.

Baby comes home.

She extends her hand, her skin heavy and thick as vellum.

Baby -

_A girl had looked at her like this, recently, her face bruised from Rook’s fists, nose smashed across, honey hair heavy with pollen and the smell of blood –_

Momma stands before her, leans down, rubs her cheek against Rook’s, and her skin comes away in wet, sticky layers –

Rook wakes with the taste of dead moths in her mouth, her cheeks swollen with tears, and Boomer licking her face.

She cried, because no one can see, and Boomer’s seen her cry before, anyway. She grips onto his stinky dog fur like he’s a lifeline, and cries until her lungs feel punctuated. But he is warm.

When she’s stopped leaking, and he’s licked all the salt away with his sticky kisses, her heart has gotten back to normal.

“Thanks boy.” She says into his velvet ear. “You gross fucker.”

His tail wags, and it bring such a sudden burst of joy that she laughs. It swells in her heart. He is alive, and he loves her.

“You’re awake.”

She hadn’t noticed the door unlocking. But there is Joseph Seed.

Not wearing a shirt, dressed in sweatpants and nothing else. He’s sweaty, too. She hopes he’s been working out. Hope he hasn’t just decided that clothes are for sinner, and We Will Be Naked In The House Of God.

She nods, avoiding eye contact.

Jesus, he’s cut himself again. There’s a new bandage on his torso. What does that mean? He’s getting unstable? She glances up, notes that his eyes seem sharp, and focused. Too lucid. It makes her skin crawl.

Boomer’s fur is raised, and there’s a low growl building in his throat. She leans over, hugs him, distracts herself by distracting him, whispering quietly -

“Yes, I know, what a nasty sweaty man, huh? Nasty sweaty hipster Jesus man, isn’t he? Yes, very stinky bad man but we must tolerate the garbage boy, me may need him, yes we might, and then I promise, one day, you can tear his throat out and eat his guts, yes I _promise, yum yum, I’ll dry him out like jerky for you to snack on, tasty snacky snack-”_

“Get up.” A command, a careless turn of the back. It’s almost insulting that he doesn’t think of her as a threat, anymore. “We’ve got work to do.”

Work, she discovers, literally means work. She was expecting some type of kumbaya camp shit, but instead he hands her a scrubbing brush and water as soon as she’s out of her room.

“Get cleaning.”

“What?” Boomer, tucked behind her legs, whines as Joseph glares down at them both.

“Everything you and your mutt might have contaminated.”

“But you already-”

“Clean.” She wishes he’d shout, like John. Or have some of Jacob’s commands. But he’s so quiet, so precise, that if it wasn’t for his expression she’d try and argue. But one glance at his eyes, and, despite herself, she nods.

Clean- up it is.

He doesn’t stay. Yeah, at first he’s there, arms folded, watching over her like some glowering, judgemental statue. If it was someone else, she’d accuse him of checking out her pyjama covered ass.

But it’s Joseph. 

Eventually he must have determined that her work is satisfactory, and he leaves. She hears the sound of the shower.

“Whatcha think boy?” She says to Boomer, who is lying at the side and blinking his eyes at her, “shall we make a break for it? Try and get him? Hey – stop that!” The dog looks up, guiltily, from where he was worrying the bandages covering his stitches. “No! No chewing! God, I wish we had a cone.” Boomer heaves a heavy sigh, the way only dogs can, before sinking his head back down.

It’s a little worrying. She’s so used to seeing him full of energy. She hopes it’s just the injuries. Nothing worse, that makes him tremble, and sink.

“So what was it like? Living through the apocalypse?” Her throat is starting to feel weird with all this talking – painful, and almost like it’s having contractions. She swallows past the discomfort. “See any crazy shit? Angels and trumpets and such?”

Another heavy sigh, and a blink.

“What, no horseman? No heavenly lamb?” She slaps the brush down, scrubbing away at her ghostly shadow in the puddle. “Wow. What a fucking surprise, huh? Better let Joseph know.”

She scrubs for a while more, moving up the corridor. Her arms start aching, and her eyes feel weird. Dry. She works harder at the floor.

“So, about that murder. What do you think? I say we spring him. You start barking, make a good distraction, I’ll get him from behind, won’t know what hit him-”

“And then, in two years time, when the generator fails, or the air filter, you can both freeze, or suffocate.”

He sounds too calm, too mild, for someone whose voice has run her through with

ice, made her spine curl up her body in defence. She’d be angry, if her body wasn’t tensed to fight.

But he doesn’t seem angry. If anything, there’s a slight smile on his face, when he sinks down to look her in the eye.

_At least he’s wearing clothes now._

“No,” his gaze flickering, plucking at her skin. “I don’t think you’re ready to die yet. Or to see him die.” He nods to Boomer, who has raised himself (good boy, good pup, what a good puppy) to half standing, ears back, hackles raised.

Good boy. The sight of the dog’s courage gives her a bit of grit back.

“You don’t know how to fix shit.” She snarls, and pulls herself up to kneeling, so they’re on a level.

Joseph sighs, and it’s almost as heavy as one of Boomer’s.

“Of course I do. I had many years to prepare for this. I learnt everything I could. Now,” he interrupts her, standing before she can interject, “finish up. And stop the language. Please.”

He leaves her, and she wants to scream. Her cheeks are red with anger, and her knees are wet.

“Fuck you!” She howls, and throws the brush.

She doesn’t feel any better.


End file.
